Author's Forward
I was born in 1986 and raised in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. I was raised in a Christian home and a "Bible belt Christian community." I heard lots of people say, "smoking is bad" but I was also around quite a few people that used tobacco.
Most memories I have as a kid that relates to tobacco, has to do with the relationship tobacco companies had with NASCAR. During my young years Winston sponsored the NASCAR Cup Series and Skoal sponsored a race car driven by Harry Gant. This would lead anyone (especially young people) to ask the question, "If smoking and tobacco is so bad, why do NASCAR drivers associate with is so much?"
It wasn't just NASCAR drivers that were sponsored by tobacco companies but a host of other celebrities and sports leagues, probably baseball players most notably, with smokeless tobacco.
However in 2003, Winston stopped their sponsorship of NASCAR. Congressional laws were passed that prohibited tobacco from advertising on television, magazines and newspapers. They also had to stop sponsoring sports leagues, movies, plays and other various forms of entertainment. So, tobacco was just too much of a vice to be partnered with sports athletes after all.
Although some people still don't deem tobacco to be the life-killing demon that anti-tobacco activists and members of the temperance movement make it out to be. Some consider tobacco to be a bad habit but not "that bad." Even many Fundamental Baptist preachers will only slightly acknowledge tobacco as being an unhealthy practice but will not restrict tobacco users from being members of their churches or even holding offices in the church.
Tobacco has a very controversial past and that controversy continues today among groups varying from Bible-believing Christians to politicians in state houses and Washington D.C.'s Capital Building. But when you look at tobacco, its cause and effect, then search the Bible-there is only one stance a person can honestly take: tobacco is a like-killing demon. Killing more than eight million people in the world a year, tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the word. Seven million of these are the tobacco users, the other 1.2 million are people who die from second-hand smoke.
Tobacco is an addiction, a very unhealthy addiction and a social nuisance. It is impure and unbecoming of a Christian. My prayer is that this extensive project on tobacco will open your heart and eyes to this evil and you will accept what the word of God has to say on the subject.